MERGING conventional and complementary medicine in a clinic department – a theoretical model and practical recommendations

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Nadine Mittring¹  Marion Pérard¹  Claudia M. Witt²  Christopher Kummer³  David Schweiger⁴ 

[1] Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany;Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany;Institute for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, University of Zurich and University Hospital Zurich, Sonneggstr. 6, CH-8091, Zurich, Switzerland;Institute of Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances (IMAA), Zurich, Switzerland;Schweiger & Associates, Hilton Head Island, SC, USA;

关键词: Merger;    Fusion;    Complementary medicine;    Health management;    Corporate culture;    Integrative medicine;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12906-015-0696-2

 received in 2014-10-24, accepted in 2015-05-27,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundToday, the increasing demand for complementary medicine encourages health care providers to adapt and create integrative medicine departments or services within clinics. However, because of their differing philosophies, historical development, and settings, merging the partners (conventional and complementary medicine) is often difficult.It is necessary to understand the similarities and differences in both cultures to support a successful and sustainable integration. The aim of this project was to develop a theoretical model and practical steps that are based on theories from mergers in business to facilitate the implementation of an integrative medicine department.MethodsBased on a literature search and expert discussions, the cultures were described and model domains were developed. These were applied to two case studies to develop the final model. Furthermore, a checklist with practical steps was devised.ResultsConventional medicine and complementary medicine have developed different corporate cultures. The final model, which should help to foster integration by bridging between these cultures, is based on four overall aspects: culture, strategy, organizational tools and outcomes. Each culture is represented by three dimensions in the model: corporate philosophy (core and identity of the medicine and the clinic), patient (all characteristics of the professional team’s contact with the patient), and professional team (the characteristics of the interactions within the professional team).ConclusionOverall, corporate culture differs between conventional and complementary medicine; when planning the implementation of an integrative medicine department, the developed model and the checklist can support better integration.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Pérard et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.